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Micro-chips could be the new petri dish

MARK COLVIN: There are hopes that one day scientists will be able to reduce their reliance on animal testing by using computer micro-chips instead.

It might sound far-fetched for the moment, but the Wyss Institute at Harvard University is laying some groundwork.

The Director of the Institute, Dr Donald Ingber, is working on microchips that will exactly mimic living cells.

The tiny, three-dimensional models are designed to imitate complicated human functions.

Dr Ingber is visiting for a Melbourne University oration.

He talked to Rachael Brown.

DONALD INGBER: We call them organs on chips and we use microchip manufacturing techniques to create tiny hollow channels, you could of like a tunnel that have a thin membrane across it that have cells on one side - for example the lung they'll have the cells that line the air sacs on the top with air and on the opposite side of the same membrane we have the cells that line the capillary blood vessels. We also have ways of making them breathe by having suction inside the channels, it's all flexible material and so we actually recapitulate - it's like a three-dimensional cross section of a living organ.

RACHAEL BROWN: What types of cells. You mentioned lung cells?

DONALD INGBER: So we're working on over 15 different organs right now, we've made major headway with the lung, we're doing the liver, we're doing the gut, eye, heart and we're beginning to link them together and have liquids flowing through them to bring oxygen and nutrients. And we can link the fluid flow - if you like the blood vessel - from one chip to the other. So the idea is that you could have a human body on chips. So you can have a drug go into the gut on a chip, be absorbed, go to the vascular system, travel to the liver, be broken down, go to the kidney, be peed out. See if you have heart toxicity and then determine whether it affects your bone marrow.

RACHAEL BROWN: Sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel?

DONALD INGBER: You know it is something out of a sci-fi novel, I think. But our job is to make it reality.

RACHAEL BROWN: And I know your personal philosophy is that nature in terms of how it builds controls and manufactures does it better than man does, so we really need to learn from nature.

DONALD INGBER: There's no question about that and then the question is how do you go about using that inspiration to develop into new technologies that would have a transformative and positive impact on the world. And we do it for non-medical as well as medical. We're interested in sustainability and manufacturing, architecture as well as medicine in terms of both therapeutics and diagnostics.

RACHAEL BROWN: And I'm aware you've already had a break-though in terms of fluid on the lungs through this technology?

DONALD INGBER: So yes, so when we started to talk with the pharmaceutical companies they were excited about these organs on chips, but they said well the real problem is that animal models are terrible for disease models and so they asked us whether we could do a disease model, and we took the lung on a chip which had the air sac and we basically developed the model of fluid on the lungs, which is called pulmonary edema, where we could actually give a drug that it's major side-effect is fluid shifting into the air space and we would show it the same dose and the same time course, we get the same response.

And then we actually were able to test drugs in the chip and we identified a new drug with a pharmaceutical company partner and they then tested it in animals - in dogs and rabbits and confirmed it.

RACHAEL BROWN: This could potentially revolutionise drug testing and possibly, I know you hope negate the need for animal testing in the future?

DONALD INGBER: Well I think the idea is we'd be reducing animal testing by perhaps replacing one animal model at a time and it's not just for drugs. We have cosmetics companies we're working with; we have chemical companies we're working with. There are times where it's unethical to test in humans. We are funded by the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] to develop countermeasures to radiation toxicity like in Fukishima.

RACHAEL BROWN: What will it mean for the industry?

DONALD INGBER: Well the pharmaceutical industry has been incredibly supportive because animal models are more often than not incorrect in terms of what they predict will happen in humans.

Drug companies want to be able to have an instrument where they can just plug and play like a DVD player with organs on chips.

So when we grow intestinal cells in our gut on a chip they spontaneously form villi, which are the finger like protrusions that increase absorptive area, and if we have a lung airway on a chip they form cilia and they move mucus, they produce mucus and move it just like in the lung.

RACHAEL BROWN: You've worked in the field for many a year but does this even blow your mind, that this is actually possible?

DONALD INGBER: It does blow my mind actually. It's actually hard to believe the fidelity of recapitulation in terms of what these look like on these chips versus what they look like in people.

We don't get the complete organ level structure, but we get a little piece of that organ that has all of the functions.